So This Is Love
by I Call Him Fred
Summary: Ron discovers what love is, strangely enough, one day while shaving rather dangerously in his bathroom.


The problem with shaving, thinks Ron Weasley as he examines his bleeding chin in the mirror, is that you need to concentrate. It's not like brushing your teeth or something, which you can do while finishing your homework or making yourself an omelette or playing croquet. Faces have all sorts of little valleys and bumps and rough patches and with one slip, whoops, there goes half of your nose, that's a shame, but really, who ever needed a nose, anyways? Ron pinches the cut with a grimace, and rinses the skin out of his razor. Carefully, he places it back on his cheek.

"Ah!" He hisses, dropping the razor into the sink and pressing his free hand over the new cut. "Bloody--buggering--gnaa--" He sits on the edge of the bathtub, dripping little spots of blood on the floor. He looks at them, quite irritated, sees the little half moons reflected in them from the overhead light.

"Ron?" Hermione says from the other side of the closed bathroom door, "Ron, I need to brush my teeth. Open up."

Ron rolls his eyes, stalks to the door. "What if I'd said no?" he snaps, pulling the door with such force that it bangs off the wall behind him. Hermione's eyes widen in surprise, her lips press into a funny little line, and she makes a sound not unlike a muffled giggle. She bustles past, seizing her toothbrush, and examines the blood on the linoleum. Her eyes dart back to Ron, and the look of concentration on her face as she tries not to laugh doesn't make him feel any better. He stomps to the sink again, rinses the razor, and is about to touch it to his face again when it's tugged out of his hands and Hermione is steering him to the toilet. Pushing him down onto the lid, she seats herself sideways on his lap.

"Honestly, Ronald, you are acting like a five-year-old." She tells him affectionately, finding the shaving cream and slathering some on his face.

"Yeah, well, what five-year-old do you know who has to shave?"

Her eyes roll heavenward, and she looks as if she's contemplating giving his face another slice, but when she does touch the razor to his skin, it's gently, and with a look of caution and precision she starts to shave.

Ron doesn't really understand why she loves him. It's ridiculous really. He's childish and immature at times, he knows that, and he's not all that intelligent and he's not very handsome. _Hogwarts: A History _makes him think he'd rather throw up slugs (which is as unpleasant as it sounds, and he would know) and he refuses to even think about _A History of Magic_. She's a genius, and looks beautiful even when her forehead is all furrowed in concentration and she's ink-splattered and wearing his old Chudley Cannons T-shirt. But somehow, inexplicably, insanely, she loves him.

Hermione reaches over to rinse the razor in the sink and to grab more shaving cream, and Ron can't tear his eyes away from her, the long, lean lines, the dark eyelashes, and the straight nose. She turns back to him, gives him a quick smile and smoothes the foam along the line of his jaw. The touch of her cool fingers makes his breath catch in his throat, but thankfully, she doesn't notice. She places two fingers on his chin and turns his head to the side to better reach his jaw, and he can't look at her face anymore. His eyes focus instead on her knees. Her perfect, thin, pale knees, covered in what are quite possibly the only freckles on her body, which are at the moment pressed uncomfortably up against the toilet paper roll as she shaves for him.

Ron is actually quite embarrassed. How many perfectly able 19-year-old males have to get their girlfriends to shave for them? None who have any self-respect, that's how many. Eyes straining to look down his own face, Ron shifts uncomfortably and knows he's made a mistake when he feels the stinging of a new cut and hears Hermione's sharp intake of breath.

"Don't move, Ron!" She tells him, pulling the sleeve of her shirt to dab at the blood.

"I'm sorry," he mutters, lapsing into a sullen silence. He can feel his own ears turning red. If George could see him now...

He watches her eyebrows frown, right at his eye level. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," he mumbles.

"Don't be ridiculous. Your neck is turning red." She reaches for the shaving cream, and carefully smoothes some onto the front of his throat. She looks at him and smiles mischievously. "Tell me now, Ron, before I start to shave again and accidentally slice your Adam's apple."

His eyes focus on the wall over her left shoulder, and he mutters quietly, "I can shave by myself."

Hermione's forehead crinkles, but the right side of her mouth twitches in what is probably a repressed smile. "Ron, if you try to shave again when you're this surly, you will accidentally slit your own throat. I'm almost finished. Hold still."

He brings his own fingers up to cover hers. "Hermione, I--"

Hermione tries to pull out of his grip. "Ron, let go, I'm nearly done--"

The razor flies from her fingers and lands in the bath. "Now look what you've done..." She trails off, and the two of them look at each other, not speaking, and suddenly inexplicably, they are kissing. Ron's hands are probably shaking, as they are wont to do when he's kissing Hermione, and are pressed on the small of her back, in her hair, around her wrist. "No one will ever let me live it down, letting my girlfriend shave for me," he mutters into her mouth, and it sounds more like: "Mmph mph mph mMMPh mmph mph mpph mmph mmmp, mmmphhh mph MMMPMPPMH mmph mph mph," and Hermione swallows all his stupid protests with a quiet murmur of, "Shut up, Ron," and her hands are on either side of his face and his back is pressed uncomfortably up against the water-tank and they are both lost in the warmth and wetness that is kissing, and though Ron figures this sort of thing should be disgusting, Hermione makes it not. (Ron is prone to thinking in run-on sentences.)

A banging on the door reminds them that yes, there are indeed other people in the universe, and yes, they want to use the bathroom as well, and yes, they will have to stop kissing eventually, as difficult and unwelcome as that sounds. But Ron has trouble caring about those other people until Hermione pulls back with a kiss on the corner of his mouth, and says, between deep breaths, "We should--"

Technically, he still doesn't care, and starts kissing her again, the image of her in his mind, telling him: _so this is love_. So then, apparently, love is Hermione shaving for him, sitting on his lap, a little bit of his blood and shaving cream and ginger whiskers on her chin, knees banging up against the toilet paper roll, and kissing him back with the same enthusiasm as he is kissing her. And, he supposes, love is knowing that she'll do it again every day, if he wants.


End file.
